7 Reasons To Hire A Social Media Agency Versus Building In-House

2022 is here! Now that we’ve embraced all of the change 2021 brought us—iOS updates, shifting attribution windows, ROAS reset, website disruptions, NFT trends, modernization of digital currency, *ah-hem* Metaverse, and a new leader in the World’s most visited website—we’re ready to talk capability optimization to drive results in the new year for your business.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen an accelerated trend in big corporations building in-house agencies in an effort to shore up accessibility of talent, control marketing across capabilities, and create a more rapid response in marketing deployment.

This had to work, right?

In most instances, no.

Albeit unique to each business, there are numerous common reasons why this approach has not worked including: the difficulty in recruiting specialized talent and retention, actualized costs of talent, software and technology expense, scalability, and most importantly, vision and integration, which require years of diversified experience in a constantly changing environment.

In 2022, we’re seeing a new, revisited trend—businesses are looking for specialized partners. In other words, specialization trumps size – Small Is The New Big. Earlier this year, General Mills CMO Ivan Pollard, made it a priority to support smaller agencies to drive growth. This use of small, specialized firms is accelerating. Here’s why:

1. Performance In the Ever-Changing Social Media Landscape: Let’s face it, social platforms, software, and technologies are changing at a rapid pace. Hiring a specialized agency allows you to work with partners who are dialed into these changes and therefore focus on getting the most value (ROI) for your investment.
2. Access to Specialized Talent: Modern marketing teams want skilled players and partners across channels. Specialized agencies thrive in an environment of testing, optimizing, and scaling— and they provide leadership in best practices across channel, platform, and across industries.
3. Scale: Specialized agencies are equipped to scale at speed much more so than an in-house agency. A key part of marketing success is knowing when to break and when to throttle up.
4. Innovation: Want to realize HUGE results? The early bird gets the worm! Specialized agencies often receive early access to Betas releases and are able to exploit social platforms that are on the brink of offering paid advertising—realizing big results as early adopters. They also have access to and understanding of specialized software and tools.
5. Vision and Leadership: Specialized agencies are typically led by industry veterans, providing a depth of knowledge both from a market and operational perspective.
6. The Actual Cost of Talent: There is the cost of hiring talent (i.e. salary), and then there’s the actual cost of hiring talent and developing responsive capability within an organization. This holistic cost includes: salary, cost of recruiting, onboarding, professional development, benefits, taxes, travel, expenses, and retention. Partnering with a specialized agency may not only be a more effective solution in driving performance, but also a more efficient one.
7. Location Is No Longer a Barrier: If there’s a professional silver lining from the pandemic, it’s that great partnerships can happen virtually.

There’s never been a better time to take advantage of opportunities in Social Media and drive significant results. If you’re looking for a specialized partner to lead your social media marketing efforts, reach out today and learn more on how we’re winning for our partners.